I am nightmare slow.
Thick mud sucks at my snow boots.
My throat is a coffee stirrer
stuck shut.
What else can I do?
Stop?
Sink in?
They say the only way out is through -
Well,
They haven’t seen my through.
They haven’t seen my
bird bones, my
stomach turning crushed
oyster shells, my
blackened nerves,
the hot salt water
seeping from my skull.
I am a human-shaped sack.
(I had you tricked.)
If I stop and sink,
my skin will snag on stories
sharp as capless thumbtacks;
my pieces will scatter
and I will be lost forever.
So I will pray to the church of
my little legs,
my baby muscles
that burn,
but work
and work and work
so my soul can skim
the surface of the scum,
the hurt I know I will not
outrun.
